Most councils allow staff some access to social media, compared to just one third two years ago. Social media has also provided a crowd funding portal to rescue a project from failure.

Read more on SOCIAL MEDIA ARRIVES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND OPENS NEW FUNDING OPTION…

Jeremy Hope, Dr Peter Bunce and Franz Röösli argue that success comes from harnessing the knowledge and creativity of everyone concerned, especially those that work at the interface between the organization and its customers. They also know that their budget-driven management processes are too slow, rigid and expensive and encourage the wrong behaviour. But leaders are on the horns of a dilemma. How do they empower their people and adapt to change without losing control?

Read more on THE LEADERS DILEMMA…

MPs on the cross party Transport Select Committee have warned the Government it must do more to show that transport expenditure plans involve a fair allocation of resources across the nation.

Read more on MPs WARN THAT TRANSPORT FUNDING MUST BE SHARED FAIRLY ACROSS REGIONS…

Children in care are moving to placements more frequently, they receive less warning of the move and are given little choice about the next placement.

A survey by the Children’s Right Director has revealed the concerns of children in care about the scale and handling of their moves to new placements. In 2011 movement to new placements in the year rose from 4 to 5. More than half of children in care surveyed said they had no choice of placement the last time they were moved. Just over half of the children in care were only given a week or less notice before they were last moved to live in a different placement. Twenty-three per cent reported that they were given no notice of their last move and were told on the same day they were moved.

Read more on CHILDREN IN CARE MOVING MORE FREQUENTLY WITH LESS WARNING AND RERDUCED CHOICE…

The life chances of children are directly related to the quality of parenting. This article explains how parenting skills can be improved to increase the attainment level of pre-school children.

In Gosport, children’s attainment is below the national average. Little Waves Children’s Centre and Woodward Lewis used “Positive Deviance” facilitation to address the problem from within the community. By mobilising a group of mums, who got together to learn from each other on how to overcome barriers to their child’s learning and development, a new support group has been established and practical methods to addressing the problem are being disseminated throughout the community.
The impetus for the programme came from the 2009 Children’s attainment results, which showed attainment in Hampshire as low when compared to the rest of the UK. Children in the pre-school age group scored just 51.8%. The Gosport district of Hampshire scored the lowest at only 41.8%, 10% lower than the rest of the country.

Read more on RAISING THE ATTAINMENT OF PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN BY POSITIVE DEVIANCE…

Competition between NHS hospitals improves their efficiency and can save significant amounts of money. But allowing NHS hospitals to compete against private providers has not produced the same positive outcomes for the public sector hospitals.

Read more on COMPETITION IN NHS BRINGS EFFICIENCY BUT NOT WITH PRIVATE SECTOR INVOLVEMENT…

Government departments have become overly complicated and this is stalling the coalition government’s efficiency drive. Departments are on average 30 per cent more complex than their largest private sector counterparts.

These are the main findings from The Public Sector Complexity Review, which also found that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is by far the most complex, followed by the Department for Transport and the Ministry of Defence. The Review surveyed over 150 civil servants across the major central government departments to assess the impact of a range of over 100 different complexity drivers on performance in their departments.

Read more on COMPLEXITY IS HARMING GOVERNMENT’S EFFICIENCY DRIVE…

The Cabinet Office has announced a deal with IT suppliers that gives all public sector organisations access to cloud based IT services. The G-Cloud framework is set to revolutionise the purchasing, management and delivery of public sector IT services.

Read more on CLOUD COMPUTING DEAL BRINGS CHEAPER SERVICES TO PUBLIC SECTOR…

Essex County Council is to finance family and community-based work with young people on the edge of care or custody with Social Impact Bonds. Essex is the first council to launch a bond funded programme. This form of funding is being pioneered by the Ministry of Justice in Peterborough prison.

Read more on SOCIAL IMPACT BONDS TO SHAPE PUBLIC SERVICES OF THE FUTURE…

The size and scope of mobile working projects expected to increase dramatically across local government in the next two to three years. This article looks at the benefits and barriers to its development.

Read more on MOBILE WORKING IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT SET TO GO MAINSTREAM…